E3: New information on TopWare's Scivelation

I met with TopWare Interactive and while they showed me a lot of titles, they weren't quite ready to lift the veil on one of their biggest projects just yet. Scivelation, a post-apocalyptic shooter announced in 2009 has been progressing under the radar at Black Wing Foundations since that time and will get a full reveal very soon.

For the time being, however, TopWare did give a little bit more insight into what the game is. Scivelation is a third-person shooter set in the days after the biblical Apocalypse. Those wretched souls who remain after the War of Tribulation has ended are under the control of a theocratic one-world government called, appropriately, The Regime.

Players will play as two characters, Mikhail Ivanov and Elisha Amano. Mikhail is the Captain of the Resistance and the combat-oriented character, with cybernetic enhancements to give him an edge in battle. Elisha, a former Regime geneticist turned rebel, takes a more stealthy approach. The game's opening chapters will require you to play as specific characters, so as to introduce their differing capabilities, but you'll be able to choose who you play after that point.

Both characters will have access to customizable weapons and a variety of special abilities appropriate to their gameplay styles. Elisha will have the ability to cloak herself, create a holographic projection and something called "psychic scouting," which I'm forced to assume means she can watch me masturbating. Mikhail, for his end, gets a shield ability, a berserk charge and remote-activated weapons.

The folks at TopWare seem really excited about the story, which they described as drawing inspiration from dystopian literature and the work of George Orwell in particular. But they wouldn't reveal any further details on that or anything else. The idea is intriguing enough to catch my attention and I'm hoping the game makes a big splash when we get to see it in action at Gamescom in Cologne.

An avid player of tabletop and video games throughout his life, Conrad has a passion for unique design mechanics and is a nut for gaming history. He can be heard on the comedy podcast (
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